Svetlana Alexievich Nobel Lecture: On the Battle Lost | Hacker News Reader

Svetlana Alexievich Nobel Lecture: On the Battle Lost

nobelprize.org

98 pointsnkurz18 comments

This is one of the most powerful speeches I've come across.

I'll explain in short.

It makes me happy that such sadness, fear, pain and suffering is not present today.

On the other hand, It makes me sad that all of that meaning is lost in society and we chase frivolous things. We don't value humans for their humaneness anymore. We value them for their external appearance, and other frivolous things.

I understand that I cannot generalize the general public this way, but remember i'm taking a subjective stance. I'm merely stating its impact on my thoughts, it may be far from the truth or on point. I dont care.

> We value them for their external appearance, and other frivolous things.

Like we value King Carl Gustaf for only being born in a royal family, and bow to him while accepting Nobel prizes.

I think the respect there comes from what he represents (tradition, collective judgement of the Nobel Committee, respect gained by the Nobel prize as a result of it being awarded to certain people, etc.) not from the actual person of Carl Gustaf. While we can question each of those, e.g. achievements of some of the laureates may appear to many rather questionable today (I won't name names but I have a few in mind and many people do too), I think we can not deny that Nobel prize is still regarded as an esteemed award. So that what people are bowing to, not the external appearance of some old man named Carl.

This. Carl XVI Gustaf, as a person, is of questionable importance and virtue. But as king of Sweden he's a living symbol. He's like the flag or something. Achieving this effect is also why European royalty has been widely apoliticized.

Who's Carl Gustaf?

Form the use of the present tense, and reference to the Nobel Prize awards, presumably Carl XVI Gustaf, currently reigning King of Sweden.

Yeah.. made me think, consider my presumptions, taught me and left me with a need to ask questions. That certainly was a good one.

>[...] such sadness, fear, pain and suffering is not present today.

[Citation needed]

While I'm on the subject: Germany has a radicalization hotline, that people can call and report any person they fear is about to be radicalized. Know what the most common caller is and who they report? Mothers reporting their sons. It's the same shit that's in this speech, just for a new age.

That's a very powerful statement. I'd love to see some kind of source for it so I can repeat that myself.

It's in German but just feed it to Google translate or something: m.morgenpost.de/politik/article206703521/Radikalisierungs-Hotline-beraet-immer-mehr-Angehoerige.html

Danke schoen :)

Who do you think should be the most common caller? Colleagues? It's none of their business if one of them goes to listen to some imam after work. Fathers or friends, maybe?

A mother-child relationship is the strongest interpersonal tie in our society, so what you describe is not surprising at all. I bet it's also true for rehabs and mental hospitals.

The Nobel Prize winner and the author is a profoundly tragic figure. Unfortunately the English language Wikipedia article on her doesn't begin to describe the level of suffering and pain that her family has experienced and that shaped her childhood.

Unfortunately the suffering she went through caused her to have a very negative bias towards the outside world. Her writings are the epitome of depression: imagine a writer describing San Francisco by focusing just on the parts of the Tenderloin district covered in piss. That is pretty much her unique viewpoint on the world and Russia in particular.

Her family has reasons to have gripes against Russians, given that her parents were Ukrainian and Belorussian minorities who suffered disproportionally when they tried to establish independent states. So take her speeches and her writing with a generous dose of salt. She is well known for her agenda and her unhealthy worldview.

That's a pretty ridiculous ad hominem. You don't seem to even try to engage with the substance of what she's saying.

Nonsense. My entire argument is about her writing and how it was shaped by her childhood experiences.

While being factually true, that's an incredibly shallow view of her work. It's the same as linking all your sexual preferences to (un)resolved Oedipus complex from your childhood -- it's most likely to be true, but doesn't give you any useful insight into the subject matter.

>“my politics are closest to that of The Economist newspaper: mildly Libertarian, fiscally conservative, socially liberal where it’s practical and pragmatic, cautiously globalist”.

now everything falls into place: just like The Economist you are also virulently Russophobic

It looks like we're talking about different magazines called The Economist, but I appreciate your interest anyways.

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